A way to move forward

When I first discovered Husband’s secret life, I immediately turned to my go-to tool set: Think about where I want to end up, and do what I need to cause that outcome. Be reasonable. Be nice. Be understanding.

These things often serve me well, but they fell short of helping me say thing things that I really needed to say in those early days and weeks and months.

What I didn’t have when I discovered Husband’s betrayal were tools to express the deep anger and resentment I felt about what he did.

With years of therapy behind me, I’ve learned new tools and I’m better able to say what needs to be said, to talk about my feelings, including anger, and better at facing conflict and situations that frighten me. So when feelings of anger and resentment come up, I’m more able to talk with Husband about them.

But when I try to express the anger and resentment I feel today about those past events, it’s confusing to both of us. Husband doesn’t stop me, but I know it’s hard for him because he feels so different from the person he was. And it’s hard for me because I know, after years of therapy and recovery work, he’s a different man, and it doesn't feel like anything is being gained in our relationship by me purging myself of these things that feel like they need to come out.

What I realized after talking with my close friend (who also happens to be a therapist) is that the person I have unresolved issues and unspoken anger and resentment toward is gone. The person I need to yell at - scream at, curse at - has disappeared.

I don’t know exactly what to do about my issues with an absent perpetrator (especially as I don’t feel very satisfied by role playing, yelling at pillows, or writing unsent letters,) but it’s very helpful to distinguish because it clarifies a couple things for me:

• Husband’s recovery doesn’t invalidate my lingering unresolved issues.
• It’s possible to be angry with “old” Husband, while trying to live in the moment and have a loving relationship with “new” Husband; it’s possible to let them be two different people so I can move forward with the healthier person who’s in front of me now.

I’m still not sure how I’m going to resolve things with someone who’s no longer around to hear me out, but this perspective helps me separate the person Husband is today from the person he was, which creates the opening for me to live the life I have right now, less constrained by unresolved issues from the past.

Getting to the root

Tonight at my meeting I heard tools that I can use:

1) Return to morning practice of connecting with my higher power (so other things, for example my anger and resentment, don't become my higher power.)

2) Return to step work and reading fellowship literature

3) Look farther back in my life to see if I can identify where this quality of being unforgiving, and these feelings of and this clinging to anger and resentment originate. What am I afraid of?

In talking with others after the meeting I realized that I still do feel that if I was valued enough this never would have happened; I realized that anger and resentment feel safer than forgiving; and that I hate the phrase letting go because to me it means being a good girl and not being upset, because I know it's the right thing to do. (My mother uses that phrase, and yet she never lets go of anything. Perhaps I have no role models for authentic letting go.)

These are concrete things I can do, and it feels good to have actions to take instead of staying mired in a fog of anger, resentment, sadness, confusion, and emotional isolation.

We read Step 6, and it said "It takes a brave person to step unarmed into the arena of the unknown, desiring only to relate to God and others with honesty and intimacy for the first time."

I need to remember that this is why it gets hard sometimes: The life I'm trying to live requires that I put down my defenses, and that is scary, especially when I lose touch with higher power.

My journey is my own, but I'm not alone.

Wednesday, 10.12.11, 12:20AM - Like a reassuring hand on my shoulder, a non-answer to my questions, Pema Chodron showed up in my inbox just now:

"To stay with that shakiness—to stay with a broken heart, with a rumbling stomach, with the feeling of hopelessness and wanting to get revenge—that is the path of true awakening. Sticking with that uncertainty, getting the knack of relaxing in the midst of chaos, learning not to panic—this is the spiritual path. Getting the knack of catching ourselves, of gently and compassionately catching ourselves, is the path of the warrior. We catch ourselves one zillion times as once again, whether we like it or not, we harden into resentment, bitterness, righteous indignation— harden in any way, even into a sense of relief, a sense of inspiration." - From The Buddha Is Still Teaching, selected and edited by Jack Kornfield, © 2010.

Still pissed after all these "I'm sorries"

What do you say when you are still angry and resentful toward someone who has sincerely apologized 1000 times already?

I'm sitting here on the phone with the IRS getting to the bottom of all the taxes Husband didn't pay while he was in the throes of his illness, some of which could have been handled if he'd skipped a few visits to the $500 prostitutes.

I'm so angry to be in this position, and so angry about the lame way he's handled resolving these issues. He is trying, and the deeper into recovery he gets, the more honest his efforts are. And he is sorry.

But I'm still pissed. I don't want to dump all over him because there's little he can do. The past is past, the mistakes have been made (and they weren't all his, because I could have paid more attention.) So I guess I just air out here and move forward?

I know! I'll make an outreach call! (I never do this, so it's a good contrary action.)

Wrestling with my Self

Went to church this morning, and what I got from it is that because I am an expression of the divine (Meister Eckhart - "Let God be God in you."), all my needs are already met and that when I'm unsure about that, I can lean toward and call on my higher power for support.

I can't say with any certainty that any of this is true, but it gives me a more empowered place from which to live, so for now I say yes to it. It doesn't need to be true to have a positive impact in my life.

Removing Need from my relationship leaves me free to love Husband without trying to get from him what I (with support from my higher self / higher power) should be providing for myself: validation, acceptance, security, guidance. I don't even Need love from Husband. I go to church and I see hundreds of people who are opening their hearts to me.

Love is available.

Love does not come only from a single source (except perhaps in the sense of a Source that is divine universal love-intelligence, of which I believe we are all a part.)

Love may not come from where I want it, or from where I think it will come; and love may come from the most unexpected places.

So I am free to love Husband without Needing him to provide that which I already have (the challenge here is allowing myself to see that I already have it) and that which I can provide for myself as an adult woman.

This is NOT to say that I am willing to be in relationship without expectations.

Expectations can be worked out and expressed between us. And if what I expect out of a relationship can't be met, if what we are able to work out leaves me feeling compromised, that's my indication that it's not the right relationship for me.

Fortunately at this moment in time I have every indication that we can work out a set of mutual expectations that leave us both satisfied, peaceful and uncompromised. Especially with the new tools we've gained from recovery work and therapy.

So I came home from church feeling open, empowered, peaceful and free to love.

Then I opened the letter from the IRS. During the period when his addiction really began escalating Husband neglected to take care of doing our taxes as he said he would. So we have back taxes and penalties that have been growing for several years now.

I have a lot of anger about these things because in my mind they're closely tied to that period of lies, distractions and thousands of dollars secretly spent on prostitutes, for which I'm realizing I still have a lot to work through to get to a place of authentic forgiveness.

So today is a day when I wrestle with what I understand is possible on the one hand, and the pull of my ego / identity on the other.

I think for me the way through this is prayer, meditation, exercise (where I release a lot of stress), and couples therapy (where I feel safe to fully express myself to Husband.)

Something else I've come to today: For me, clarity is an impermanent state, just like anything else; and peace is an ongoing journey.

Triggered

After all this time, after all the recovery, all the therapy, all the growth...there are still triggers.

It started last weekend when I stayed in a Sheraton Hotel. Hotels like that call to mind images of what I think went on with Husband and prostitutes in similar rooms. With the images come questions I thought I'd put behind me: What was he thinking? How could he do that? How could he lie to me? What was it like, being with all those other women? Did I mean so little to him that his promises to me were that easy to break, that my trust and vulnerability were so meaningless to him, that he had so little respect for me that he could - over and over again - do things that he knew were wrong, things that he knew were not okay with me in the context of our relationship?

With those questions comes anger. I'm angry at him for lying. I'm angry at him for destroying the trust I'd built up over two decades. I'm angry at him for the loss I've had - the loss of the deepest bond I had in my adult life. I wish I could subject him to the feelings that accompany such a profound betrayal, and the feelings that go along with trying to rebuild trust with somebody who has hurt and betrayed you so deeply. I hate that I have this in my life. Sometimes I wonder if I'll ever be able to completely forgive him, if I'll ever love or trust him the way I did before. I'd probably be foolish to ever trust anybody the way I trusted him. And I hate that I feel that way. I hate that this might be the reality of the world - that you can't really trust anybody. I'm afraid, too. Afraid that he'll detect how distant I can feel, and that it will scare him and that he'll leave me - maybe just when I've really started to believe he's who he says he is. I'm afraid of spending the rest of my life in a relationship where I don't really love fully, where I'm holding my trust back. But I feel like no matter what relationship I'm in, I'll never fully trust again. Like sleeping with one eye open.

Full of fear, full of anger. Some other part of me knows better. But these things are still inside me and I want them OUT and not pushed down. I don't want to wake up angry in 20 years, and I don't want to have unexpressed anger inside me for the rest of my life.

In a way it feels too late for me to express these feelings. But that's too bad, because I refuse to keep it in and suffer the consequences of that. So what if my timing's bad? It's my timing. It's all I've got.

I want so much to believe in the person he seems to be, to believe he loves me as much as he says he does. But after being deceived the way Husband deceived me...I don't know how I can ever completely believe in his love for me again.

Today I had a business meeting in our old neighborhood, and once again ended up parking in front of the "oriental massage" place where Husband got his first hand job that opened the door to paying for sex. An unpleasant ending to a difficult week.

I don't doubt that these feelings are a part of the process. I realized in my 12-step meeting that I'm trying to "figure out" my way past this, and that part of my journey is to accept that not everything can be figured out. I can pray to my higher power for help with these things my logical mind can't resolve.

But for the moment I'm sad and afraid. Sad about what I've lost, and afraid that I won't feel so deeply connected with a partner ever again. If that's the case, I know I can manage. I've got a beautiful son, and fantastic friends. But it's not what I want for my life. I don't want my heart to be walled off, to feel distant, mistrustful, unable to love deeply. But I don't want to be a fool either.

Or maybe that doesn't matter. Maybe just as there is no good or bad, there is no foolish or wise. Maybe it's just all about my experience in the moment and how I respond to it.

Right now I'm all questions and no answers.

Sometimes I fantasize about getting back at him

While I know it's not the path of recovery, sometimes I fantasize about taking a year to have affairs and lie to Husband about it. The idea being of course that he might gain a bit of insight into how it feels to doubt your ability to distinguish reality from lies, how f'd up it feels not to be able to trust your partner, and how hard it is to rebuild trust with someone who has betrayed you so deeply.

The women in my therapy group tonight seemed to feel that given the growth they've had they'd be able to know if their partners were lying. I don't have that confidence. And that really pisses me off. Will I have to live in the shadow of doubt forever, always prepared for the worst, ready for the unimaginable to suddenly become my new reality?

Then I remember MPJ's wise warning that it's a mistake to assume that "making people realize just how poorly they've done or how much they've hurt people is an excellent way to provide that needed motivation, be it in the form of shame, guilt or even empathy."

I also know that not only would this tactic not have the desired result, but I would be compromising who I am, and would most likely feel sadder, angrier and emptier than ever.

But the thought does cross my mind from time to time. I still have flashes of wishing I could hurt him as deeply as I think he's hurt me.

Thank god for groups and therapists, spiritual reading and recovery. In my heart of hearts, even when I'm angry or hurting or questioning the future, I know recovery is the path I really want to be on.

Circling back to things I haven't dealt with emotionally

I realized last night that I'm continuing to return to issues that I've understood in an intellectual sense, but have not dealt with emotionally.

I used to feel I had this special connection with Husband where I knew on a level beyond words what was true with him and between us. That connection, that confidence in knowing him and feeling safe in that knowing, was a large part of what distinguished our relationship from my relationships with others. Put in simpler terms, he's the guy I felt like I was in a fox hole with, facing what came along together, knowing we always had each others' backs. The part of me that was connected to him I didn't have to protect and I turned all my vulnerabilty to face him while protecting myself from most of the rest of the world.

Now I know that I couldn't tell that the connection I felt was based on false assumptions. I couldn't detect that Husband could act like he was being the partner I thought he was while lying to me about things that impact me on the deepest, most profound level possible. I know I can look someone in the eye, feel deeply connected and free to trust and, after years of shared experiences, words, deeds and other evidence that it's safe, be dead wrong.

I understand and believe that having this attachment to the past is what is keeping me from joy and relatedness in the present. And I understand that Husband could both lie to me and love me deeply at the same time. I accept non-duality. Intellectually, philosophically I see the path.

But I'm afraid, I'm angry and I don't think I've dealt with those feelings fully enough because no matter how much I know about taking the path that is in front of me and dealing with what is, rather than wanting what is not, the same fears and anger keep coming up again.

But I don't quite know how to directly confront and process the anger and fear. I've been learning not to run from it, but I don't know how to express it in a way that lets me move forward. More therapy? More S-Anon meetings? Working the twelve steps? Those are my best guesses.

Parking Lot Lady

I've been working on anger lately, and I had a moment of self expression in the parking lot of my grocery store.

I had pulled around to the front by the entrance to pick up my mom and son who'd gone back into the store for a moment. I pulled over far to the right so I wouldn't be blocking any cars that wanted to pass.

A woman came out of the store and looked like she was having trouble getting around my car. With a smile on her face she said something I didn't hear, so I rolled down my window and asked what she'd said. Still with that smile on her face she made a snide remark about how she was sure the way I was parked was really convenient for someone, but that it was really inconvenient for everyone else but she was sure that didn't matter because it suited me. Then she turned her cowardly, condescending ass around and walked away. She couldn't even be nasty and then stand her ground! Her self righteous tone set me off, and I called after her that she could have said it in a nice way, but that no...she had to be nasty about it because she was a nasty, ugly person. I continued shouting after her along those lines, and as my mom and son were betting back into the car I yelled "Learn to love your self, lady!" Mom asked what was going on and I continued loudly out my window about how mean and nasty she'd been and how it was because she had a mean spirit and was nasty and mean on the inside, and could have just as easily been nice but chose to be horrible and rude. As I kept on, we drove right past her and she started to say something back but I didn't hear her because I kept talking right over her as I drove away, on and on about how she was rotten and unhappy inside. I was so pissed! And I was trembling from the shock of having just done what I'd done.

She was right. I'd made a mistake and parked in a bad spot. But she was so unnecessarily nasty about it, especially considering I thought I was being careful not to inconvenience others.

This is a pattern in my life. I try so hard to be good, nice, reasonable, kind, blah, blah, blah. And when others aren't, I assume they're doing that on purpose, and I get so pissed off because I squelch my self expression in order to be good, nice, reasonable, kind, etc. So it was intersting to see that pattern appear.

But it was also great to actually have an outburst. I never do that kind of thing (because I'm nice, reasonable, blah, blah, blah.) I never have unruly, unreasonable bouts of messy self expression. I either get resentful or quickly rush to "how can I be reasonable? How can I be understanding?" And I've always regarded people who have such messy, angry outbursts as selfish and indulgent. It's amazing how messed up I am in this area. As if having spontaneous feelings makes someone a bad person!

Anyway, I was worried about this from a spiritual perspective. It didn't seem to do much for peace and harmony in the world for me to have this kind of self expression. Bad karma, I told my therapist. But she pointed out that maybe that was exactly what that woman was supposed to get on a karmic level. And for me it was definitely a moment of growth.

The next opportunity is to find this messy self expression around what Husband did. I think the anger is there, and I think I'm getting closer to tapping into it. But it scares me. I'm pushing toward it, though, because I think anger is just like the rest of what we've been dealing with. The only path that leads to the other side is right through it, not around it or in the opposite direction.

Assignment from my therapist today

I talked with my therapist about some of the stuff I discovered in couples therapy. She gave me two assignments:

1. Write about the feeling I have that my mother sacrificed a lot to be a parent to me and I can never make it up to her

2. Express my anger through writing and sharing with trusted friends and my S-Anon group

I've been feeling angry at Husband for breaking me. I feel irreparably broken. I used to believe that you could count on people. Not everybody, but certainly a few carefully selected, trusted people in your life.

But my experience has taught me that no matter how well I think I've chosen, no matter how much evidence I have that someone is trustworthy, the fact is I can never count on anybody 100% of the time. In that regard, I am alone. I have only myself to count on. (And maybe there are those who feel they can't even count on themselves. That would be really scary - to have absolutely nobody at all.)

The reason I can't count on anyone 100% of the time is because I cannot control what someone else will do, how they will think, feel and respond, 100% of the time. If I could control everything 100% of the time, I could predict with certainty. Any less control than that introduces some amount of uncertainty. I can never know. I can eventually trust, believe, think, hope, have faith. But I can never, ever know. So how do you live with a know liar in a context of never knowing? Don't know yet. One day at a time I guess.

I used to believe that I could know. That time, love, shared experiences and personal integrity could forge an unbreakable bond of trust. While I see now that was a form of naivete, it felt good to believe that it was possible. Now I feel sad and wary, and while the fact that it's not possible to count on others has nothing to do with Husband, I'm now intensely present to this fact because of his betrayal and I'm angry at him for that.

What goes through my head: Why did he have to do that? I didn't do that! When I had problems I talked about it. When I didn't feel heard, I did something about it. What is wrong with him? (I could go on.)

Intellectually, I know the answers or at least the explanations, so in an instant I invalidate this anger because it feels irrational.

But it's there. And I want it out now, so I don't carry it around for years, so it doesn't come out when I least expect it, so it doesn't rot me from the inside all the way out to my happy, sweet, she's-so-nice veneer.

Still having thoughts about hurting my husband

Tonight I was on the treadmill reading a book called How My Husband's Affair Became the Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me. This book has been a challenge, because Anne Brecht takes a much more traditional approach than I ever could (and has much more traditional, religious values than I do.) But inevitably, the universal rises above the individual specifics, and there are elements of her journey that parallel mine and that I relate to.

Her book mentioned that statistic of 60% of men vs. 40% of women having affairs. What is it about men? Why do a large majority of them find it so difficult to be faithful to their partners? Do they lack integrity or character as a sex? Not a question I can answer, but I really wish I had some insight.

Anyway...I began to think about having extramarital sex just to even the score. See, Husband...my promises to you can mean as little to me as your promises to me did to you. I can delude myself just as skillfully. So there. Now pull out your love and understanding.

But my husband has told me (only because I've asked) that he doesn't think he'd be as bothered/hurt by sexual infidelity as I am. Then I thought about how he feels so much more connected to me now, so much more intimate, so much more sure of my love and care for him than he did before. And I think about asking him, "This feeling you have now? Multiply that by 19 years, and then think about how you'd feel if you found out I'd been lying to you about something profound and intimate for about 12 of those years. How do you think that might feel?"

So I recognize that I still have some anger to work out.

Maybe I'll talk about this in therapy. Our couples therapist is pretty brilliant. She'll help us sort that anger out.

I also feel I'm still resisting facing the fact that my marriage was far from great, because I was not present for Husband and of course, he was having sexual experiences with all those prostitutes. I mostly want to blame him for dealing with his problems in this way. But I know no happiness lies down that path. Still...it's something else I should talk about with our therapist's help. I really think someday I can be free of all these angry, nasty thoughts. But if they don't come out, they'll just get pushed down and we've already had enough of what that leads to.